Rights Wrongs

The front cover article of today’s Detroit Free Press & News is about a pending piece of legislation to grant protection to nursing mothers when they feed their babies in public venues. The article, and the bill, look at whether this is a civil right and whether it needs protection.

A case in point concerned a local mother who was asked to leave a Target store because the security guard said it was illegal to breastfeed in public. Not true.

Are we really still debating whether a baby can feed in plain sight? Really? This has nothing to do with feeding a baby, you know – it has to do with other people’s discomfort at seeing a little bit of naked breast – which of course, they have no problem with when it’s in a low-cut shirt or bathing suit. But with a baby attached to it, for nourishment, well, apparently that is a supreme offense.

And what this is about more than anything is people’s overarching concern and judgment of others.

We are faced with two choices: look inward, or cast your glance everywhere else. If you choose option A, you stop being concerned with what others are doing, saying, feeling, thinking and attempting to do. You focus on your own energies and where you pour them and you focus on ways that you can make a difference on this earth.

For that is the whole point of our being here, in fact. If we are not here to contribute something, to make a difference, to make the world a better place, then what is the point?

Choose option B and you’ll spend your life blaming others, pointing fingers, feeling dissatisfaction at every turn. For it is impossible, truly, to control anyone outside of yourself. Even our own children – they are not extensions of us; they are whole individuals in their own right and while we mold them and guide them and hopefully teach them right from wrong, they still have their own leanings which we have nothing to do with.

Let the mothers nurse. Let the babies feed. If you’re uncomfortable with the way that we were created, steer your cart down another aisle or avert your gaze. It’s none of your damn business anyway.